Tom's Planner Gets Collaborative

Tom’s Planner — an easy-to use online planing tool that can create Gantt charts — has been updated with an oft-requested feature: Collaboration.

If you haven’t tried it, Tom’s Planner is kind of like a simpler and more colorful version of Microsoft Project. It doesn’t have any of the complex project management features that make more heavyweight tools like MS Project or Liquidplanner so useful, but if all you need to do is plot out a basic, easy-to-understand project plan to share with your team, Tom’s Planner is more than adequate. It has an intuitive drag ‘n’ drop interface, which should make project planning straightforward, even for complete newbies.

The new collaborative features enable you to share and work on project plans with others. Just select a plan from “My schedules,” enter the name of the person you’d like to share it with and select whether you’d like them to be able to edit the plan or only view it. Tom’s Planner then generates a unique invitation link that you can send to your colleague.

You can try a demo of the product without signing up here. It’s worth signing up, though, because they’re currently offering a free, one-year account to all new users who sign up during the beta period, which ends on July 31, 2010.